Zero Latency is an Australia-based creator of a VR attraction platform and content. Since its founding in 2013, the company has launched five co-op VR games supporting up to eight players. The company's latest game, Sol Raiders, is the first to pit players against each other in a 4 vs. 4 format. Road to VR got to preview the new title and see how Zero Latency is tackling the unexpected challenges that come with PVP at a VR attraction. With 25 locations now in operation around the globe, Zero Latency is one of the leading VR attraction platforms today. The company develops the hardware, software, and content for the platform, which allows up to eight users to simultaneously play a shared virtual reality experience which unfolds in a large physical playspace that's 60 × 30 ft (~18.3 × 9 m). Zero Latency claims impressive growth over the last three years, culminating in 300,000 unique players and 420,000 unique plays in 2018 alone. At roughly $50 USD per play (with regional variances), the company's platform appears to be generating tens of millions in revenue annually. With three years of operation under their belt, the company is forging ahead with a new challenge: bringing competitive PVP gameplay to their platform. While the current roster includes five titles spanning co-op shooters and family-friendly fantasy explorations, the newest addition, Sol Raiders, will put players in direct competition with each other in a 4 vs. 4 format. https://youtu.be/ADOEuzyYstc But building something that actually feels competitive is just the first of many challenges which come with pitting players against each other in a free-roaming VR platform. To learn more about Zero Latency's approach to Sol Raiders. I visited the company's Las Vegas location at the MGM Grand hotel and casino to preview the game first-hand. Stepping into Zero Latency [caption id="attachment_85664" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Photo by Road to VR[/caption] The MGM location has been open since 2017; it's located inside the venue's 'Level Up' lounge which caters to a millennial crowd through traditional arcade machines, pool, beer pong, and now VR. Neon 'Virtual Reality' signs draw patrons to the Zero Latency kiosk where players trade $50 for 30 minutes of gameplay, choosing between any of the five available titles (soon to be six with Sol Raiders). [caption id="attachment_85662" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Photo by Road to VR[/caption] After entering some info on a desk-mounted iPad, players are ushered through a small corner door that leads to a small room where they are pre-briefed on their chosen game, then fitted with hardware. The Zero Latency hardware consists of backpack-mounted computers, customized OSVR headsets, headphones, and pump-action gun peripherals. The headsets and guns are dotted with glowing orbs which are used to track players and their weapons. [caption id="attachment_85671" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Photo by Road to VR[/caption] Once everyone is suited up, players are led into the next room, an unassuming space with black floors, walls, and ceilings, with little more than some extra equipment hanging on the wall and a white grid on the floor. A veritable void it may be, but this of course is where the magic happens. Once inside, players are instructed to put on their headsets and headphones, and find themselves in futuristic glowing pre-game lobby where usernames entered earlier at the kiosk float about eight pillars of light. Users are asked by a 'game-master' (who is overviewing the game and can speak to players over their headphones) to step into the pillar which corresponds with their name, allowing the platform to uniquely identify all players and collect data on their gameplay for a post-game breakdown. A similar approach is used to break up the eight players into two teams of four; after the name assignment, blue and orange pillars appear on opposite sides of the playspace, and stepping inside designates your team affiliation. From here, players are transported with their teammates to a brief training space where they learn how to use their multi-purpose weapons: pulling the trigger works like a semi-auto laser rifle (which can overheat with too much use), while pumping the action readies a 'charged' spread shot which works like a shotgun. The multi-purpose weapon is a smart design choice which offers weapon variety without needing to implement a true weapon management system (thereby keeping the experience streamlined and accessible). [caption id="attachment_85669" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Image courtesy Zero Latency[/caption] After a minute or so of learning how to shoot the weapons, players are dropped into the first of three unique objective-based maps, a symmetrical arena consisting of corridors toward either end of the stage, with a somewhat open space in the middle. Above that middle open space is a floating orb which acts as a push/pull style objective; players aim their weapons at the orb and hold their triggers to push the orb toward the opposing side. A point is scored once the orb is moved far enough to the other side, and it is then reset to the middle. Players start at either end of the map and quickly engage each other, exchanging volleys of fire while trying their best to hide around corners and cover exposed angles. Once you take enough damage you'll die and need to respawn back at your starting point, but therein lies a major challenge which Zero Latency has solved with a very clever system. Continue Reading on Page 2: The Rift and Distorting Virtual Space » The Rift and Distorting Virtual Space [caption id="attachment_85670" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Image courtesy Zero Latency[/caption] In any standard FPS, VR or otherwise, when you die you simply respawn wherever the game wants you. In a free-roam VR environment where all locomotion is physical and the entire arena is shared space, the game clearly can't just make you appear back at the spawn point—and that's where 'the rift' comes in. 'The rift' is a sub-reality of sorts which handles one of the most challenging elements of free-roam VR PVP gameplay: space management. When players die, they are teleported to the rift which looks sort of like being inside of a sci-fi wormhole, but with a concrete floor that's crawling with ghost-like avatars. The avatars represent every other real player in the arena, allowing dead players to run back to a pre-defined spawn point without bumping into others. Once the dead player makes their way back to their spawn point, they are spawned back to life on the map proper. It might sound a bit complicated on paper, but it works surprisingly well and doesn't require players to really understand what the rift's function is behind the scenes. Dead players run back to their respawn points and pass right by living players, leaving them none the wiser. When you die and enter the rift, it's fascinating to suddenly see where everyone else is located. Often times you'll realize that enemy players were literally right next to you, only they were obscured at the time by a virtual wall—or even more bizarrely, virtual space distortion, but more on that in a moment. The rift underlays all of the maps in Sol Raiders and is essential to the core gameplay, but it isn't the only space management trick that Zero Latency has employed. As PVP action is more fast-paced and a bit more frantic than the co-op games, it's important that players not come too close to each other for fear of bumping into one another or accidentally smacking someone with the hefty gun. To create some buffer space around players, the avatars are oversized from the start, including virtual guns which are quite a bit longer and larger than their real-life counterparts. This is mostly invisible to the player, and ultimately tricks them into being extra conscious about their personal space because in VR it will look like they have less room than they actually do. [caption id="attachment_85660" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Image courtesy Zero Latency[/caption] Zero Latency further uses virtual space distortion to turn Sol Raiders into something that's dynamic in ways that real life small arena attractions like paintball or laser tag can't be because of their physical limitations. The best example of this is on the third map where players from each side ride small gondolas away from their base towards a central platform where lots of close quarters fighting happens. In virtual reality, players feel like they've moved across a large space, but in reality they're still standing right next to where they started. This approach allows Zero Latency to create a virtual playspace that's larger and even in different orientations than the real playspace, expanding the map beyond its physical boundaries. The map takes advantage of this fact by placing two elevators at each team's main base which raise players up to a sniper perch which can shoot down toward the central platform. While players in the perch feel like they're 20 feet in the air and shooting at enemies 50 feet away, in reality they're standing on the same floor as everyone else, seemingly shooting at distant virtual enemies that are physically just feet away. These systems work effectively and invisibily to make the three Sol Raiders maps feel unique and immersive. And while Zero Latency says this is just the start of their PVP ambitions, the potential is already plain to see. Continue Reading on Page 3: A Hopeful Start of Something Bigger » A Hopeful Start of Something Bigger Starting Saturday, Sol Raiders will launch at Zero Latency locations around the globe. In the coming months the company plans to gather feedback from real players and continue to hone the gameplay to maximize fun and competition. The end goal, says Zero Latency CEO Tim Ruse, is to create gameplay that could support Esports activities at the company's locations, but Ruse is quick to note that an Esport is not something you can simply manifest. "You don't wake up one day and declare you've made an Esport," he said. "It takes time." The company spent 6–8 months in the R&D phase to figure out what PVP would even look like on the company's free-roam VR platform, followed by an equal amount of time actually building out Sol Raiders. At first, Ruse said, the company tried just tossing as many people into a virtual arena as they could, with the sole objective of killing each other; a 7 vs. 7 shootout was fun at the start, but was ultimately chaotic and didn't offer much variety. When the company dialed things back to 4 vs. 4, matches became less chaotic, while the eventual addition of an objective (instead of pure deathmatch gameplay) brought an element of strategy and teamwork to the matches that was previously missing. [caption id="attachment_85668" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Image courtesy Zero Latency[/caption] Sol Raiders is the company's first step toward the potential for Esports competition, but it's still far from it, Ruse admits. The company hopes to foster a community of players who will come back for more, and to learn from those groups about how to further drive the content and gameplay towards ensuring solid competition and a high skill ceiling. Hardware's Role in Competition [caption id="attachment_85665" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Photo by Road to VR[/caption] Getting there will likely require a step forward in the platform's tech as much as its content. While Sol Raiders looks like a surprisingly strong step in the right direction, the distinctly 'first-gen' hardware of Zero Latency's platform feels increasingly dated in 2019. [caption id="attachment_85667" align="alignright" width="258"] Photo by Road to VR[/caption] The core of the system is of course the headset, and while Zero Latency has squeezed a lot of worth from the OSVR HDK2 headsets through various customizations, along with the bespoke tracking system, newer headsets are widening the gap in what consumers might expect from both a visual and tracking standpoint when stepping into Sol Raiders. To that end, Zero Latency recently announced that it's working with HP and Microsoft to formulate its next-gen hardware platform, which will hopefully do even more to capitalize on the company's impressive content development work. When I asked Ruse about the next step in hardware, he wasn't ready to talk specifics, but made the point that a VR attraction platform like Zero Latency necessarily needs to move slowly and deliberately with hardware because it needs to be battle-tested and hardened in ways that consumer hardware does not. Reliability is key in an environment where location operators shouldn't be expected to be VR hardware experts, and where a stream of users will put much greater wear and tear on the equipment than would happen in a home setting. Exactly what Zero Latency's next-gen hardware will look like isn't clear, but we can make some guesses based on the companies with which it's now allied. Working with Microsoft, we might expect to see the company move toward Windows VR headsets and inside-out tracking. HP—the other company that Zero Latency is working with on its future hardware platform—offers both a VR backpack and just so happens to be working on a new high-res Windows VR headset that's targeted toward commercial sectors like VR LBE. [caption id="attachment_85663" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Photo by Road to VR[/caption] Either way, achieving the next level of visuals and tracking performance is going to be as important for a shot at Esports competition as the content itself. Serious players don't want to feel limited by their interface into the game; ensuring that the hardware can support their wits and athleticism will be key to fostering a community of players who are willing to return round after round for the thrill of battling it out against fierce competition. Update (February 7th, 2019): A prior version of this article reported that Zero Latency's playspace was roughly 30 × 15 ft. This has been adjusted to the correct dimensions of 60 × 30 ft. Disclosure: Zero Latency paid for travel and accommodations for a Road to VR reporter to attend an event where information for this article was gathered.